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This sturdy man has served the county for twenty-seven years as a beat cop, and the last nine years at the county jail. He jingles when he walks; his belt sags below a round belly big and hard as a pregnant woman’s, and is studded all around with tubes of pepper spray, keys, handcuffs, a pistol, a pad of paper, cell phone, and a wallet.
They call for him at the courthouse. Jangling all the way up the glass walkway, which is stifling hot even in the middle of a Chicago winter, he still pauses at that one window where he can see a slice of Lake Michigan through the buildings. His hip is acting up and makes the jingling even louder when he limps. The doctor says he should be doing some cardio before the next fitness test but he’s so tired…
The bailiff meets him in the corridor behind the judge’s seat. He can see crossways into part of the courtroom, where the inmate waits. He sees all kinds, and this one is the kind he hates the most. A little girl hardly a hundred pounds, all crumpled up into herself like a tossed-away Kleenex, wet streaks down her face. Her eyes are tragic black holes, bewildered and guilty. Sometimes even these little ones get crazy when he takes them away. Sometimes they get weird when the handcuffs come out. So you always have to be careful.
He steps into the courtroom, then droops little. These cases are the worst. In a line, across the first row of the shiny wooden benches, is a family, staring at their little wad of crumpled-up family, staying with their child till the end. The public defender is packing up his briefcase and the judge chats with the clerk. The bailiff gives him the clipboard and he signs. There’s a sound next to him.
“What did you say?”
The mother manages to gasp out, “I didn’t say anything,” and then covers her mouth with her hand before another sob comes out.
The sheriff hates these jobs.
Paperwork done, he turns to the little dark-haired girl. “Time for your round trip to Aruba. Ready to go?” He keeps his voice light, over her tears. She stands up and hardly reaches his shoulder.
The sheriff is a good man. He has grandchildren almost her age. There’s no pleasure in this work. So he takes her back into the judge’s chambers before he cuffs her, so her parents don’t have to see it.
Sometimes when I need some peace, beauty, and inspiration I click over to Jen Lemen’s blog. This post, “Becoming the Girl Again”, was a quiet revelation to me in thinking about how I can cultivate my best self – the person I truly want to be. I hope you enjoy it, too.
Warning: this post may make you a vegetarian.
My dear sweet Joe grew up on cattle ranches. See this adorable picture of him? He’s walking a steer that weighs at least 1,000 pounds. I think he’s about five years old.
Growing up on a cattle ranch made him grow up early, but it also gave him a lot of fascinating stories. Like how he helped birth little calves and checked for pregnancy by sticking a whole arm inside a cow.
This last bit of Marlboro Man’s life was on my mind when we walked through the cattle barns at the state fair. I knew that there was a lot about cattle ranching that might make a tender greenhorn feel a little dizzy, but suddenly, I needed to know more. Because that’s just how my mind goes.
How far am I gonna go with this story? All the way. So don’t read on unless you really think you’re ready for the birds and the bees and the bulls. I mean it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
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“You said the cows are artificially inseminated?”
“Usually, yeah. You want to make sure they’re inseminated on the right schedule.”
“And this happens how?”
“The bull semen is injected into the cow through a tube.”
“That sounds like a lot of fun for the cow.”
We stroll farther, and a worse thought occurs to me.
“Um, how do they get the semen?”
“From the semen collector.”
My imagination takes a huge, horrible leap forward. After all, I know how semen is collected for human artificial insemination.
“Who gets THAT job? The new guy on the ranch?”
“You usually buy the semen from a distributor, but yes, there is a semen collector.”
At this point I have to know about this subject even though I really don’t want to know. I stop him in the middle of the barn.
“So what…now…um, how exactly does that, um…happen?”
“A lot of times they use an electric prod. They put it in the anus and the bull has an orgasm.”
“They…um…”
“And someone is standing there to collect the semen.”
“Huh.”
We walk on.
“The bulls like that, do they?”
He shrugs.
“It works.”
I never want to put “Bull Semen Collector” on my resume.
“Gorgeous diamonds!” She takes her hand. “Are you a newlywed?”
I can’t hear Winnetka Girl. We’re all smashed together on the steps of the Metra, so close that my face is in some teen’s armpit, and then the warning blares out, “CAUTION. THE DOORS ARE CLOSING. CAUTION. THE DOORS ARE CLOSING.”
“I know my diamonds!” brags Lake Forest Girl. “They’re always so shiny when you’re first married.”
Winnetka Girl says, “Well, about the time they’re ready for polishing, it’s time for an upgrade anyway, right?”
“And a redesign.” They giggle, and Lake Forest Girl’s husband rolls his eyes.
We had just spent over an hour on the train platform with Lake Forest Girl and her husband, who was furious about a taxi driver who couldn’t find the Ravenswood stop even though he’d been a Chicago driver for 20 years. Some part of this was her fault, and she tried to jolly him past the topic, but it kept coming up again. They even called other people to talk about the taxi driver and how she shouldn’t have paid him. Twenty bucks was too much.
Lake Forest Guy was also vehement about wanting some pancakes at the Golden Nugget restaurant next to the platform. Something about this was also her fault. She made a joke about it, but her lips remained in a tight line.
I was more interested in her dress than the conversation. She was wearing a halter dress with a pattern that I saw, upon closer inspection, to be large green frogs leaping on and off even greener lilypads. This little sundress probably cost $500 at one of the mahogany and privilege-stained boutiques in her town. Her husband had the neat, colorless, tasteful clothes and the tanned, relaxed face of very wealthy men.
“I love Winnetka,” said Lake Forest Girl. “I just wish it was more affordable.”
“Oh, I love it too. When we got married, I told Saul that I just didn’t want to live anywhere else.”
Winnetka Guy looked at Lake Forest Guy and smirked. “I hope all these teenagers aren’t getting off at my stop. There’s a big house across the street where they’re always having parties.”
I look at Joe. “I am SO blogging this.”
After three or four stations, the crowds had cleared enough that there was room for us in the cars. The Winnetka couple had left; Lake Forest Girl was sitting upstairs alone on a bench for two while her husband sat on the first level.
Joe and I sat across from each other. I took out our old iPod and gave him one of the earbuds. As Fernando Ortega began to sing us to sleep, our fingers twined around each other, and I was so very grateful for the life I have.
She doesn’t know what the word means, and I’m not going to help her. She doesn’t need to know how this word will take away her dignity. So I answer the question about her intake form and go back to staring at my shoelaces.
The public health clinic is steaming hot today, though a window is opened to let snow-fresh air through a rusty grille. Babies creep across the slushy, muddy floor, and their mothers pick them up again and again, settle them in their laps, and then let them squirm down when they get too wiggly. The older, steadier children sit on the floor with books or toys, making little noise, providing their own distractions in what have probably been a lifetime of sitting in public waiting rooms.
A black guy in a knitted hat starts grumbling. “Can’t believe this. Been here two hours. Two hours and a half. I had an appointment.”
“We all have an appointment,” another guy mumbles, but he doesn’t even lift his head from the wall or open his eyes.
The shy girl next to me has another question. “They’re asking about what medication I take. What difference does it make? If I don’t got any insurance, I can’t get any. One of them’s $259 a month.”
“There’s a coordinator that helps you file for help with the prescriptions. Have you ever seen those commercials about how drug companies can help you pay for your drugs?”
“I don’t have a TV.”
A woman, so fat that she seems wedged into the seat, leans over to us. “The coordinator is Yvonne. She’ll do all the paperwork with you.” The woman’s breath is foul; dental care is clearly far down the list of her health needs. “Only problem is, it takes four to six weeks for a decision, and they could always tell you no. But you know, it’s always worth a try. Yvonne’s real nice.”
The black guy with the appointment is agitating. He’s found a couple of listeners. “If I get a job, how’m I gonna come sit here all day just to see the doctor? It’s like that whole swine flu thing. I got diabetes, the doctor told me to go get the vaccine. You know how it was supposed to be all the high risk people first? I get to the clinic, and there’s a line all down the street. All the rich folks in their pretty clothes, they all got to get the vaccine and give it to their kids, and the hell with people who are really sick. Like they all high risk, right?”
I lower my eyes and blush. That vaccination clinic had been a couple blocks from my house, in a nicer part of town. Those people who got the first round of vaccines were probably my neighbors, those privileged middle class people that I saw waiting when I drove past. These indigents? They didn’t stand a chance.
The other guy taps his chest and nods. “I did the same thing, dawg. You know what? I had to take a bus to get out to the clinic, then I stood in a line four hours in the rain, then when there’s like three people in front of me, they said they ran out.”
“Same here, man. They told me to come back in a month when they got more. A week later, I got the H1N1. I still got a cough.” His cough, indeed, sounds gravelly and deep.
“All them people in line, what, did they get a day off so they can get a shot?” grumbles the skinny Hispanic girl who has been picking at her fingernails. “I’d like to have that kind of job. I take a day off, I get fired.”
The intake nurse, a frizzy-haired old lady with a tiny pinched-up mouth, looks up at the knitted-hat guy and shakes her head. She’s still working on eating the piece of toast she brought in for breakfast. Papers fly through her hands, stamped and signed, labeled, filed. The clinic is just getting their first computer records system, but I can’t imagine a computer being any more efficient than she is.
When my appointment is over, I’m off to the better side of town for my routine radiology tests. As I walk towards the door, a nurse, who volunteers here every Monday, runs up with my wallet in her hand. “I just found this on the floor.”
Twenty-four dollars are missing. This is all our cash until Joe gets his next commission check. I want to cry, but I take a big breath. I figure while I was looking the paperwork, someone dipped into my purse, and then tossed down the wallet when they were through with it.
“Anything gone?”
“My cash,” I said. I take a breath and shrug. “I guess they needed it more than I do.”
But I’m not feeling philosophical. I’m feeling emotionally indigent.
